Saturday, September 13, 2008

Talking Business - Stuck in Google’s Doghouse - NYTimes.com

A timely reality check...

As Mr. Savage saw it, Google’s near monopoly in search ads (its market share is approaching 70 percent) put it in a position to decide which business models it would tolerate and which ones it wouldn’t. “Google can use AdWords to pick winners in every category,” he told me.

Mr. Savage is hardly in a position to sue Google for antitrust violations, of course. But he did feel there was one thing he could do: tell his story to the Justice Department, in the hope that it might help stop the Google-Yahoo advertising deal that was announced in June. Hence the letter. “Google’s conduct is plainly consistent with acts of monopolization and attempted monopolization,” Mr. Savage’s lawyer wrote in his letter to the Justice Department. He added that “Google has achieved and maintained its market share through anticompetitive exclusionary conduct.”